The visual skills of professional and amateur rugby players

Abstract:

This study consists of three separate publications. The first article attempts to evaluate the difference in the visual skill level of professional versus non-professional rugby players. The software visual skills, involving skills such as eye-hand coordination, eye-body coordination, central-peripheral awareness, and reaction time, were examined. The results indicate that the professional players did out perform the non-professional players on all these skills except for visual concentration. Not all the results were however statistically significant. The importance of the above skills in the game of rugby is discussed and recommendations as to the implementation of vision enhancement programmes are made.
The second study explores the importance of the ‘hardware’ factors of the visual system in the game of rugby. A group of professional and club rugby players were tested and the results compared. The results were also compared with the established norms for elite athletes. The findings indicate no significant difference in hardware skills between professional and club players. Compared with the norms for elite athletes, performance of most of the rugby players were average or even worse. This suggests that in the game of rugby the hardware skills may be of lesser importance and that visual enhancement programmes should focus more on improving the players’ software skills. The hardware visual skills should not be neglected though because these provide a base from where the software skills can develop.
Thirdly we wanted to determine whether there are a statistically significantly difference between the visual skill levels of forward and back line players in rugby and whether they performed visually according to the norms established for elite athletes. The results indicates that there is much room for improvement for both forward and back line players in eye-hand coordination, visual concentration and central-peripheral awareness because these skills, play an important role in a sport like rugby and because the players under performed according to the established norms.
Thus attention should be given to develop the hardware visual skills like accommodation and fusion to an average level of performance, to eliminate any potential limits on the software visual skills. Consistent, position specific visual training should be incorporated in the daily training routine of these players to develop the software visual skills to their full potential.